/m/singularity

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“Guys have always been cheating. Period. ... I'm just glad they didn't have steroids when I was playing. I'm not sure what I would have done."

—Hall of Famer Bob Gibson, in 2009. This quote was recycled by HOF voter Jeff Fletcher, who claims that he’s “not going to try to retroactively clean up a sport that showed no interest in keeping itself clean.” (Jeff Fletcher, Orange County Register)

that author is ignoring socioeconomic factors. only rich families will be able to do that genetic stuff, and being rich is mostly luck, not merit. grades and standardized test scores in school are already more closely correlated to income than iq, especially at the high end. such controlled breeding and genetic manipulation is only going to exacerbate a lot of the socioeconomic inequalities we complain about and given our challenges over the next century that would be very bad. and what about the definition of intelligence? i can cite a myriad of flaws with iq tests and all sorts of other intelligence measures, not to mention their inherent bias in defining intelligence and utility of intellect.

There's virtually no chance that genetic modification of humans is ever legal in Western countries except to fix detectable disabilities. We'll be lucky if we're allowed to use it for that. It's unfortunate but true, because in democracy the ignorant majority rule. Equally sadly, part of the reason it will be illegal is that if it was legal, there would be a great deal of social pressure for insurance companies to be forced by law to cover it, for precisely the economic reasons jdennis mentions. So the insurance lobby will make sure it's illegal.

Of course, it's also the case that humans presumably are already breeding for intelligence quite effectively at the top end of things, because the intelligent tend to breed with the intelligent. That, unfortunately, does nothing to raise the overall standard (it might help the most intelligent become more intelligent, but that's probably the result of the resulting nurture rather than the underlying nature).

(Another problem is that in the West, the intelligent are increasingly often not reproducing at all, because they realize what a difficult economic proposition it is.)

You are assuming that intelligence breeding works this way. For example it could easily be the case that more intelligent people breeding leeds to more children on the autism spectrum and other such consequences rahter than just purely more intelligent children.

And no I am not suggesting autistic children are unintelligent (my eldest is on the spectrum), but he is not the forerunner of the genetically perfect super intelligent either.

What I am saying is the mind is a complex system and I don't think intelligence (as we understand it today) is any kind of simple linear thing to be bred for like eye color.

There have been claims that Yao Ming is the result of a crude eugenics program.

There's virtually no chance that genetic modification of humans is ever legal in Western countries except to fix detectable disabilities. We'll be lucky if we're allowed to use it for that. It's unfortunate but true, because in democracy the ignorant majority rule. Equally sadly, part of the reason it will be illegal is that if it was legal, there would be a great deal of social pressure for insurance companies to be forced by law to cover it, for precisely the economic reasons jdennis mentions. So the insurance lobby will make sure it's illegal.

Voluntary euthanasia is legal in a few countries, and that's something that is often shocking to the masses. With GM all it takes is for one first world nation to make it legal for it to become something the superrich can take advantage of. And if we're talking about modifying human eggs and sperm so as to produce superbabies, it only means two weeks Liechtenstein while the samples are taken, the gene work is done, and the egg is implanted. Then it's jut a normal pregnancy and childbirth.

I think the real problem is an extension of what Bitter Mouse alluded to, the fact that the Human Genome Project has taught us that the action of genes is a lot more complicated than we thought. This will be especially true in a system as complex as the brain, where small changes can have huge cascading effects that we really don't understand and can't easily predict. For a long time the "superbabies" will be ones born without relatively simple negative gene expressions -- the genes for Downs Syndrome, things like that.

The other issue that we'll have is that it will be almost impossible to do experiments that would lead to improving human intelligence through genetic manipulation. The animal models don't work so well because the brain is such a complex system. And if you work on a human and screw up, you've suddenly become Josef Mengele.

I don't think about this stuff very often, but I wouldn't turn down a blowjob from Seven of Nine.